Community engagement is a huge goal of mine, even when I write about wanting to create dialogue and to engage in exploration, what I am aiming for is community engagement. Patricia Johanson is my primary artistic context. One of her most well received works is Fair Park Lagoon, Dallas TX, a flowering and diverting set of walkways that provide shelter for native species of flora and fauna, as well as walking routes for visitors to discover and connect with nature. What I connect with isn’t the beauty of what Johanson had built but instead what the built material created. I think this is a sentiment she would agree with as a consistent goal within her work is for visitors to “discover some vision of the design intelligence of nature”*, the same nature we are a part of. Not only is she designing with nature as a collaborator, but is making much consideration toward human involvement and connection with the natural environment.
Patricia Johanson, Fair Parks Lagoon Project in Dallas, TX, created in 1981
this photo was ripped from her website specifically this page
*Kelley, Caffyn. Art and Survival: Patricia Johanson’s Environmental Projects. Salt Springs Island, BC: Islands Institute of Interdisciplinary Studies, 2006.